The Commodore 64

Although this game system was more popular in Europe than it was over here in North America, I still got small glimpses of it in my childhood. An erstwhile tenant in our household owned one, and he would let me play games on it. I remember playing Jumpman Jr. (and loving it!!) and Congo Bongo. And I'll never forget Impossible Mission, with that blood-curdling scream! Unfortunately, I don't remember much else.

I didn't make any contact with the C-64 from then on, until I was in the 11th grade and bought an Amiga 1200 off my friend. On one of the disks was a demo called "100 Most Remembered C-64 Tunes". Upon first listening to it, I thought it was totally hokey and primitive. But, after I listened through all the songs on the demo, I fell in love with the music, especially that of Martin Galway. I never actually owned a C-64, but in 1996 the opportunity came up for me to buy one with hundreds of disks. I got the C-64 just to listen to those awesome SID songs on the real thing.

Let's face it, the C-64 has many enjoyable games, but the rest are crap. Arcade and console conversions are routinely awful and carelessly put together. Don't even get me started about Ocean releases! Most people admire the C-64 for its SID chip and memories of those days of yore, but (admit it!) not much else.